


Cacoethes

by Maiden_of_Asgard



Category: Prospect (2018)
Genre: Alien Planet, Bakhroma Green, Developing Relationship, F/M, Impregnation, Mail Order Brides, Marriage Contracts, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Smut, space western
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:40:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23203357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_Asgard/pseuds/Maiden_of_Asgard
Summary: Most people wouldn't return to the Green Moon after losing an arm and nearly losing their lives... but Ezra isn't most people.His latest brush with mortality has turned his mind towards legacy, and he returns to the Green to seek out a fortune that will set him and his progeny up nicely on some civilized world, far from the harsh galactic frontier where he's spent so much of his life.The fortune is one thing, but the progeny are something else entirely, and so when Ezra sees an advertisement for women who are willing to ship out to the frontier to marry strangers in the hopes of a better life and financial security, he decides that it's the most practical option. It's just business.
Relationships: Ezra (Prospect)/Original Female Character
Comments: 10
Kudos: 53





	Cacoethes

He was waiting in the clearing when the shuttle landed. Had it been an ordinary supply drop, Ezra wouldn’t have bothered. His time was much better spent out prospecting in the forests, and standing idle while novice prospectors and ill-equipped floaters scoured and ruined potential dig sites made him uneasy and agitated.

It was easy to spot his order when she stepped out of the shuttle; her suit was of a modest quality, but obviously newer than most who’d drifted out to the frontier, and even though he could see very little of her face behind the morning glare of the sun on her helmet, she was noticeably more petite than the men emerging from the lander in her wake. She seemed delicate - too delicate for her surroundings. 

Ezra watched as she anxiously surveyed the new world around her while the crew unloaded supplies. Her gloved hands were clasped anxiously in front of her. He wondered if he’d made a mistake. 

As he approached her, he found himself at an odd loss for words, an occurrence which befell him very infrequently. “Miriam, I presume?” 

She jumped, turning to peer at him through her helmet. It was incredibly obvious that she wasn’t used to wearing one. “Ezra?”

“At your service,” he replied, continuing his initial assessment. Her appearance, from what little of it he could see, was similar enough to the picture of her he’d received; her eyes were a striking, rich sea-green. 

He wondered if she was just as eager to see him outside of his suit as he was to see her. It had been… a long time. _Too_ long. He picked up one of her bags, watching from the corner of his eye as some of the floaters who’d arrived with her drifted a little too close for comfort. The girl seemed completely oblivious to any potential dangers the world around her posed. 

_Guileless,_ Ezra thought. He couldn’t decide how he felt about that. 

In their brief correspondence, he’d never made any attempts to hide the harsh, dangerous life that would await her on the Green. She’d made the choice to come, regardless. He shouldn’t feel anything like guilt, he decided. There was no room for guilt in such a blatantly transactional relationship.

“I hope that I didn’t bring too much,” she said, hefting a bag over her shoulder. “I figured you probably didn’t get supply drops that often, this far out on the frontier, and it seemed smart to bring as much as I could…” She let out a little laugh. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m talking too much.”

“Talk away, little bird,” Ezra told her. “You would not _believe_ how much of a challenge it is to find a competent conversational partner here on the Green. That is the primary reason I decided to turn to such unorthodox measures for companionship.”

“I guess you don’t get many family types out here, huh?”

“They are few and far between, and generally unpleasant,” he said, but he turned to smile reassuringly, because she looked anxious enough without discussing the dispositions of the Sater. That could wait. “It is a loner’s world, Miss Miriam, and I have spent far too many years toiling away on the Green to refuse myself an indulgence or two, when they present themselves.”

She laughed, and he could hear the nervousness in it, even distorted as it was by the speaker in his helmet. “I count as an indulgence?”

“And indulgence, and also a partner. Harvesting Aurelac isn’t as easy as your average hopeful young prospector might be led to believe, and that is _doubly_ true when one has lost a good half of his fine motor skills.”

She was silent for a moment. Ezra had mentioned the loss of his favorite limb in one of their few correspondences - it seemed only fair, given the very personal sort of partnership they were undertaking - but he wondered if she’d managed to forget it. 

“Stopped chirping so quickly, birdie?” he asked lightly, cursing his reckless desire for a companion more and more by the moment. 

“I’m worried I’ll be bad at it,” she said. “Helping with the prospecting and harvesting, I mean. I tried to read about it, but… this place is just so _different._ Wild.”

“Wild and lawless and deadly, yet men - and the occasional women - flock here to fight for their fortunes. _Aurelac potentia est.”_

Miriam huffed. It sounded like an attempt at laughter, but she obviously hadn’t adjusted to the filtered air and heavy suit yet. “Aurelac is power?”

“That is the undeniable truth of this newest frontier.”

“How much will it take before you’ve got enough, do you think?”

He looked over his shoulder. “How long will I keep you stranded out here in this wilderness with me, you mean?”

“Not exactly,” she said, in a tone that suggested it _was_ exactly what she’d meant. “But you did make it sound like you have some kind of plans for the long-term. Considering… considering how difficult having children here must be.”

_Right to the point._

“You don’t mince words, do you?” Ezra said. “Difficult, yes, but not impossible. With any stroke of fortune, by the time potential progeny are on the way, I will be prepared to leave Bakhroma Green far behind and seek out a gentler world and greener pastures.”

“Greener than the Green?”

His smile was wry. “A poor choice of idioms, I will admit.”

They slogged through the underbrush in near-silence for a while after that, the rattling of their labored breathing the only sound reverberating in their helmets. Ezra felt the urge to fill the silence, but as it turned out, discussing his expectations for domestication and procreation with a woman who’d only just arrived on the Green wasn’t as easy a topic of conversation as he might’ve expected.

Ezra was tired.

The years had begun to wear heavily upon his shoulders. Oddly, it wasn’t the many brushes with death that turned his mind towards thoughts of _legacy_ \- it was the loss of his trusty right arm, somehow, and the odd mixture of frustration and pride he felt towards the girl who’d amputated it. He didn’t have a paternal bone in his body, or so he’d always thought, but as he and Cee had escaped the Green together, he’d had a very profound realization.

He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life alone on some remote moon, wearing himself thin for riches that would most probably get plundered from his still-warm corpse once someone a little quicker and a little trickier finally caught up with him.

Ezra, despite his better judgment, found himself craving something _more._

Something with the potential for greater long-term satisfaction.

“One more hill,” he told her, and when they crested said hill, Ezra gestured grandly with his biomech arm at the odd homestead he’d cobbled together from a deluxe drop-pod, his tiny ship, and a few inflatable, domed tents. When he’d made the decision to return to the Green to squeeze as much of the Aurelac from its forests as he could possibly manage, he’d been determined to do it in style.

It was a risk; resources attracted scavengers, eager to take what he had for themselves. He understood them perfectly, for his mindset was incredibly similar. Of course, very few people were truly indefatigable, and ever since the Rush had ended, many of the prospectors remaining on the Green were under-equipped or ill-informed. 

Ezra was neither.

Miriam whistled. “Impressive,” she said. “How did you set this all up by yourself?”

“One handful at a time,” he replied, his ears still ringing from the shrill grate of her whistle through the speakers in his helmet. “Necessity dictates, I cooperate, and Kevva waits.”

“The Reeve on Jann Ve said that the frontier is Kevva’s playground, lawless and chaotic.”

Ezra turned to regard her in amusement. “Did he? I was unaware that I was in the presence of a religious philosopher, Miss Miriam.”

“You aren’t,” she said, leaning over to catch her breath. “I don’t dare to philosophize about much of anything. You can’t feed and clothe yourself with religious philosophy.”

“Are the Reeves on Jann Ve of the same sentiment?”

She laughed. Ezra was quickly coming to the conclusion that her laughter might very well be worth any trouble she caused him; it had been a long, long time since he’d heard any genuine amusement in another’s voice. Still, her ragged breathing worried him. It _shouldn’t,_ because no one breathed easily on the Green, particularly so soon after arriving… but something about her made him feel more solicitous than usual.

 _And so domesticity begins to rear its head,_ Ezra thought. 

He imagined gallantly carrying her over the threshold of their shared domicile, a grand, ridiculous gesture to add a bit of flair to such a momentous occasion. Unfortunately, their arms were both full, their suits were cumbersome, and he wasn’t even certain that his new bride had any interest in feigning romance.

Ezra led her into the main living unit, a slightly more spacious pod than the ones he’d been accustomed to during his first stint on the Green. He dropped her luggage on the floor and pulled off his helmet, enjoying deep, refreshing breaths of the cool filtered air.

“Welcome home,” he said. She was preoccupied with struggling with her helmet, and Ezra sighed. “Here, birdie, allow me.”

“Thank you,” she said shyly, messy dark waves of hair spilling free as he lifted her helmet from her head. She looked around the pod, and he couldn’t tell if she was pleasantly surprised, or disappointed.

Ezra decided that brusque professionalism was his best recourse. “You brought the paperwork?”

“Yes,” she replied. “It was approved and accepted the day before I left Puggart Bench. You’ll just need to sign your copy to make it official, in case you ever need to claim my _vast_ wealth as an inheritance.” She unzipped her suit and peeled it off, revealing a very bland, worn sweater and pants that were nearly threadbare, and produced a folded envelope from her pocket. “There you go, all printed and proper.”

“Such efficient nuptials,” Ezra said, tearing open the envelope. He read over the forms quickly, noting her elegantly scrawled signature at the bottom.

He set it aside long enough to free himself from his own suit, then searched for a pen, internally debating which hand to use to sign the damned thing - neither his biomech nor his left hand produced a signature that resembled the one he’d perfected as a young man, back when he was fanciful and scrawled effusive love-letters to every girl who’d caught his fancy.

Left-handed was best, he decided, pulling the cap from the pen with his teeth. Miriam watched him anxiously as he signed their marriage contract, her hands clasped in front of her, almost as if she expected him to suddenly change his mind and send her out alone on the Green.

“And so it is done,” he said, offering a reassuring smile.

She smiled back, though her eyes revealed her tension and tiredness. “So it is.”

“There is a bath closet, if you’d like to freshen up. It is, without a doubt, my greatest luxury.”

“I would like that,” she said. “Thank you, Ezra.”

He showed her to the bath closet and gave her a brief instruction on its various controls, then left her to shower and change in private, reckoning that they could both use a moment or two to process the very significant way in which their lives had just become intertwined. 

She was incredibly pretty, and slightly younger and less world-weary than he’d expected, given the brief bits and pieces she’d shared about her life and the circumstances that led her to seek her fortune out on the frontier. There was a sweet sort of innocence in her eyes, an uncertainty that made him… Well, Ezra wasn’t entirely certain how it made him feel. 

That she was undeniably attractive was a blessing, as their arrangement was necessitated by his desire for scions to inherit the wealth that he was, after _years_ of toiling away and giving his life and his youth, determined to accrue. _A pretty little wife and children._ Ezra laughed, raking his fingers through his hair, wondering if he’d truly lost his mind.

He wouldn’t be alone again.

When she emerged a short while later, her hair still damp, she was only wearing very scanty white undergarments, and Ezra felt as if the air had been knocked from his lungs. She crossed her arms in front of her chest, but not before he spied the tiny peaks of her nipples, hardened by the cold air in the pod. He rose to his feet, his mouth dry.

How long had it been?

Miriam took a seat on the bed, avoiding his gaze as she brushed past him. Their tension hung heavy in the air, anticipation of what was to come next bringing his blood to a boil. It was a strange circumstance for seduction, but if Ezra couldn’t manage to seduce his new spouse, then he would be in for a very rough time.

He took a steadying breath, rolling his shoulders. “Is there anything that you aren’t comfortable with in bed?” he asked bluntly. “Or, to be a bit more pleasant, anything that you particularly enjoy?”

“Well… I’m not exactly sure.”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“This will be - _you_ will be - my first.” She chewed on her lip for a moment, giving off the very distinct impression that she hadn’t intended to reveal that little detail until their union had been consummated, if ever. 

“Now, little bird,” he began, “in our correspondence, you said—”

“One of the girls I worked with on The Pug said that sometimes men don’t want a girl they have to… to teach. _Especially_ the kind of men who were making their fortunes out on Bakhroma Green. Rough men. She said that having experience might get my file snapped up more quickly.”

“Experience that you, of course, do not have.”

She raised her chin in stubborn defensiveness. “I’ve read about how everything works. On the way here—”

 _“Kevva,”_ he interrupted, rolling his eyes towards heavens that were obscured by the thick glass of the dome window and the pollen-laden trees beyond it, “the woman has _read_ about it.”

“I—”

“And what if I had intentionally sought out someone with extensive _experience_ because my personal perversions are overwhelming and manifold?”

She bit her lip, peering up at him from beneath those thick, dark lashes. “I’m a quick learner,” she said, and if Ezra had been slightly less skilled in reading people, he might’ve believed her bold confidence was genuine.

He laughed. He couldn’t help it; nothing ever seemed to work out the way he’d planned, and he didn’t know why he’d expected his mail-order bride to be any different. “I think that slow learning would be measures more enjoyable in this scenario, birdie.”

Miriam trembled, then gave a slight nod of agreement. Ezra both hated and adored that she seemed so uncertain in his presence, so painfully desperate for his approval. He sat heavily on the bed beside her. He couldn’t remember the last time something had made him feel _anxious_ without involving the potential for death or dismemberment. 

He’d always regarded himself as a very competent lover, but then, he’d always had excellent manual dexterity… and he’d yet to test his biomechanical prosthesis in such _delicate_ circumstances. 

Carefully, as if actually dealing with a skittish sparrow ready to take flight, Ezra reached up and ran his knuckles down her cheek and neck. _Soft,_ he thought. His own skin was rough, weathered from years spent toiling on inhospitable planets and dry from the constant necessity of filtered air. 

She didn’t seem to mind. 

“You know, Miri, I’d assumed that any fondness I’d ever held for the color green would’ve been spent after all this time in these forests… but I cannot deny that your eyes possess a certain vibrancy that the Green can’t hope to match.”

She flushed, heat spreading up her neck and cheeks, adding a delicious pinkness to the décolletage so enticingly presented above the thin white tank top she wore. Ezra’s apprehension was quickly beginning to dissipate in the face of such temptations. 

He was only a mere mortal man, after all. 

Ezra patted his thigh. “My lap would be _blessed_ by your presence,” he said, and his self-assured smile was momentarily disrupted when, instead of perching daintily upon his knee as expected, Miriam instead chose to straddle his thigh. 

She placed her hands on his shoulders, her eyes wide and a little solemn. “Like this?”

He was immediately and painfully conscious of how warm she was, so warm that he could feel her through the thin white underwear she wore and his own rough pants. Ezra found himself, yet again, struggling to capture his typical eloquence. “Yes, little bird, _just_ like that, and—”

She cut him off with a kiss, hesitant and gentle, her lips barely brushing against his. _Let her explore,_ he told himself, though the urge to pin her down on the cot was becoming stronger by the moment. His patience was well-worth it, in his opinion, when she gave a tentative roll of her hips only a moment into a much more _confident_ kiss, her tongue sliding against his. 

_Unexpected._

As she ground against his thigh, Ezra worked his way down her jaw and neck, leaving a trail of flushed skin and stubble-burn in the wake of his eager mouth. She’d abandoned the careful distance she’d kept at first, choosing instead to twine her arms around his neck, her breasts pressed flush against his chest. 

“Is this… is this good?”

“Exquisite,” he reassured her. “Absolute perfection.”

In truth, he was starting to feel that he was going to implode if he allowed her to continue. He’d forgotten how it could _feel,_ to have someone so soft and sweet and warm on top of him, how badly he’d missed it. 

He tangled his hand in her hair, yanking her head back to provide better access to her lovely throat, which he fully intended to leave reddened and bruised as a reminder of their first night together. 

There was a small, pale scar near the juncture of her neck and shoulder. Ezra paused to trace it with his tongue. “How did you end up with this?” he asked, his lips never leaving her skin. 

“Robbed on Nexus Prime,” she said, and the breathy quality in her voice made him twitch in eager anticipation. 

“A _fighter.”_

His appreciative growl wasn’t intentional, but Miriam rocked against him in response, and Ezra decided that he might as well test his new bride to see what _else_ he could do to inspire her enthusiasm. His biomech arm wasn’t as fine-tuned as he might’ve wished for the circumstances, but he could still hold her close, pressing on the small of her back to guide her as she wantonly rubbed herself against his thigh.

“Ezra?” 

“Yes?”

“Feels good,” she whispered, and he closed his eyes in a moment of unexpected bliss when she shyly kissed his forehead, her little huffs of breath brushing gently against his hair. 

“You’ll have to elucidate; what is it, exactly, that feels so good?”

“I… I can’t.”

“Say it,” he said, adding a bit of authoritarian sternness to his tone. Ezra was quickly learning - much to his delight - that his delicate little dove seemed to enjoy a domineering touch, and he was _more_ than happy to oblige. “Tell me.”

He bit her, and she squeaked. _“That,”_ she told him, her voice a mortified mumble. “When you kiss my neck and… bite.”

 _Good,_ he thought, and bit down harder on her smooth, unmarked skin, his hand sliding up to grip the back of her neck. Her head tilted back, revealing more of her throat, and she seemed completely unaware of the desperate way she’d begun to ride his thigh. He had no intention of stopping her, either, despite the painful way he’d begun to ache from his own need. He was transfixed.

She _wanted_ him.

“I think,” she whispered, “I… I think…”

“Do whatever it takes, sweet girl,” he told her, his grip on her neck tightening as she tugged on his hair so hard that it was wonderfully painful. “Come for me.”

She tried to kiss him again, but he didn’t allow it; he wanted to watch, wanted to see every enchanting expression flicker across her features. He was gratified only a moment later, when she suddenly whimpered and came undone, trembling helplessly in his arms as her climax rode through her.

Her eyes were glazed, her lips parted as she panted, their breath mingling. 

Ezra couldn’t look away.

He saw her shy uncertainty returning, and he was quick to kiss it away, exultant. “You are _mine,”_ he told her, a shadow of the marital vows that they might’ve exchanged, had they sworn their spousal fidelity on a more civilized world.

She rubbed her cheek against his, and warmth bloomed in his heart, unexpected and fragile. “I am yours,” she said. “And you are mine.”


End file.
